'Beauty and the Beast' Opens With $170 Million in Ticket Sales

Beauty and the Beast generated a stunning $170 million at USA movie theatre over the weekend, eclipsing movie analysts' forecast for box-office sales in the range of $130 million to $150 million.

Despite a few weeks of big releases, the live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast tops them all with Friday earnings of $64.2 million.

Overseas, the updated version of the classic 1991 animated musical has also delighted fans, earning $180 million to deliver a global total of $350 million.

Just previous year, Batman v Superman set a record for the most amount of money grossed for the opening weekend of a March release - domestic totals only. We believe Disney's live-action remakes will continue to taste success beyond "Beauty and the Beast" as the company is working on remakes of "Dumbo" as well as "Mulan". They're now developing movies based on Dumbo, Mulan and Aladdin.

It will also reaffirm to Disney that remaking its classic animated films is a solid business decision - as if that was needed. "What's exciting here is there is an opportunity to see these beloved stories in a way that's never been seen before, but you get to build that on the foundation of something that's very familiar".

According to Boxofficemojo, the movie broke records for an opening weekend in March.

The film collected an unexpected $170 million, breaking the record set by "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice".

The monster ape movie's domestic haul now stands at a not inconsiderable $110.1 million and $259 million worldwide. Check out the clip above... and go see "Beauty and the Beast" in theaters now.

Watch a film clip from "Beauty and the Beast", starring Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, and Luke Evans. Domestically, IMAX represented seven of the film's top 10 locations.

"Kong: Skull Island" slipped one place to number two after opening strong with a $61 million debut last weekend.